


Hand In Unloveable Hand

by techieturnover



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Canon Interlude, M/M, X2, discussion of traumatic injuries, in which we attempt to reconcile that complicated emotion where bad memories also contain good ones, just two guys talking about their feelings around a fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:47:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28915590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/techieturnover/pseuds/techieturnover
Summary: Max can heal Michael’s hand. Michael doesn’t want him to. Alex wants to know why.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 34
Kudos: 108





	Hand In Unloveable Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Set in some nebulous time period in S1, after Alex has found out about aliens but before Max heals Michael’s hand(which never actually happened, sorry I _do_ make the rules). I kiiiind of wrote it thinking it was a followup to the bro-talk that follows “I wanna know about you.” but like....time isn’t real I just wanted some nice angst and for these boys to actually TALK about their feelings.
> 
> Also we're pretending that just because Michael is angry and hurt doesn't mean he cant have good memories attached to a complicated time in his life and that those might manifest as a way to cope with and accept something that is a part of him @ THE CW.
> 
> I'm not totally happy with this but also I just needed to post something to get through my writers block so HERE IT BE. Title is from the Mountain Goats because the dang song is stuck in my head.
> 
>  **Caution Warnings:** There is some mild discussion/memories of the toolshed incident but nothing extensive.

“So, Max can heal people?” 

It’s late - late enough that Alex should have been on his way home already. But they’ve been talking for hours and it feels _good._ Being able to be around him without secrets. 

“Yeah. He also causes blackouts any time he gets a boner.”

Alex gives him a look that clearly telegraphs that he knows what Michael is doing. Reflexively he pulls his bad hand in close, tucking it into the pocket of his jacket. 

It has the opposite effect he’d hoped for, though, as he sees Alex’s eyes follow the movement. 

“Why did you never have him heal your hand?”

“Didn’t want him to.” Simple as that. 

Michael takes another sip from his...fourth? His fourth beer. Eh. 

Alex’s brows knit together, his face scrunching up. “Why not?” 

Michael shrugs, tries to go for nonchalance. There are too many reasons - things he isn’t sure Alex wants to hear. Things he isn’t sure he wants to _say._

“I didn’t want to forget.” Alex looks like he’s about to push again but Michael cuts him off. “Can you drop it? I didn’t want him to.” 

Alex closes his mouth, and something else closes too. A door Michael hadn’t realized had started to crack open. But the slam of it shutting, he feels like a slap in the face. Alex sits back in the creaky lawn chair and shifts to stare at the fire. 

Michael kind of hates it, because he knows he’s going to give in. Alex doesn’t push with Michael - but he’s never had to. Michael goes where Alex wants. It’s been an unspoken rule since Alex told him about a warm tool shed behind his family’s house. 

Michael resists talking for a minute more while Alex picks awkwardly at the label on his beer bottle. Michael looks away in frustration but he starts talking, anyway.

“I didn’t want Max to heal my hand because I needed the reminder that we happened.” He looks back to Alex, holds eye contact no matter how much he wants to break it. He’d been expecting the way Alex’s face crumples. Doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

“Why would you want to remember...Guerin that’s the worst night of my life, and you want to keep it?”

Michael shakes his head. “It’s not just that night.” 

But Alex doesn’t seem to hear him.

“I live in that tool shed. Every time I see you, or my dad, or I think about coming out I see what happened to you.” 

Alex’s voice has gone high and tight, and Michael recognizes the first signs of a panic attack. The way Alex breathes in deep but it doesn’t even reach his lungs before he’s breathing out again. The skittishness in the way his eyes move anywhere but Michael’s. He keeps talking, but Michael isn’t sure he even really realizes what he’s saying, the words tumbling out one after the other.

“It’s like I’m trapped in that moment and I’ve spent the last ten years trying to get out of it. I’m terrified of-” Michael kneels down beside the chair and grabs both of his hands. He goes low, and makes his motions as smooth and non threatening as possible, but Michael doesn’t miss the way Alex’s right hand tries to flinch away from his left. The grip in his first three fingers is still strong enough to hold on. 

Alex stops talking and draws in a breath that he holds, finally. 

“It’s not just that night it reminds me of,” Michael repeats, and this time it seems to register. 

“What?”

Michael looks at their hands, Alex’s in his. Tries to find the way to push out this one last vulnerability of his for Alex to see.

“Yeah, I think about what your dad did because of my hand.” He looks up from their hands and into Alex’s eyes. “But we still had that whole summer when you stayed. You tried to take care of me and we - we tried to be there for each other, right?”

He pauses. Alex doesn’t say anything. Michael can tell he’s listening though, so he presses on. 

“But after that you were gone. You left without saying goodbye like we didn’t - like I didn’t matter. I thought I’d never see you again. And for a while, I-” He has to swallow around the hard lump in his throat that forms at this particular line of thought. “I was afraid I’d forget what it felt like to love you. To think that maybe you loved me too.”

There aren’t any clues to what Alex is thinking on his face. Not beyond the way his lips press together like they do when he’s hearing something he doesn’t like. Alex looks away. 

Michael rotates his left hand to twine his fingers with Alex’s. The last two don’t bend all the way, but Alex meets him halfway, shifting his grip so that his fingers hold Michael’s at the second knuckle and their palms press together. The gesture gives him some weird sense of courage to continue.

“The fact that I had this reminded me of _why_ I had it. That my memories of you weren’t just some fantasy I had made up. I didn’t want Max to heal it because I guess....in some fucked up way it was the only part of you I had left.” 

“I was angry with the whole world - I didn’t want to be angry with you too. I wanted the physical reminder of your smile - of the time you tried to kiss me and I was too scared to let you. How you made me forget everything else I ever had planned for you. I don’t know - it made it all real. And I _wanted_ it to be _real_.”

He finishes, still frustrated that he can’t get out exactly what he feels. How it isn’t - always - Jesse Manes with his hand around Alex’s throat or a hammer in his hand that Michael sees. That sometimes it’s how Alex had somehow managed to be both shy and more confident than Michael ever could be. How his whole face lit up sometimes - that slow steady spread of emotion that always started with his mouth, not his eyes. Alex’s sincerity - his kindness. The un-fucking-shakeable faith he had in the goodness of a world that had never given him any reason to believe like he did. 

Every memory of the only thing Michael had ever loved was wrapped up under the knotted mess his hand had become. 

He had wanted to remember the fucking gorgeous guy he fell in love with and what it felt like to _want_ something on earth - especially when, on subsequent visits home, Alex never so much as looked in his direction. Or when he finally did, and they fell into the same pattern of love-happiness-disappointment-rejection. When the doubts had crept in, his mangled hand that stubbornly refused to heal had become a beacon of truth - reminding him that once upon a time he had been willing to risk everything for Alex Manes. 

That he still would. Stubbornly.

“It’s a part of me, and it felt like because of that, _you_ were still a part of me. A part I _wanted_ the world to see.” At that Alex finally moves, draws in a gasping breath. 

“I can’t do that, Guerin.”

The fear behind the admission isn’t lost on Michael, and he sort of hates the way it makes his eyes sting with tears. 

“I know.” He looks up at Alex again, and this time Alex doesn’t look away. They stay there, something passing between them that feels more and less like the kind of psychic connection Max and Isobel always claim to have. Michael bites the inside of his lip against doing something stupid, like trying to kiss Alex. 

“I can’t look at your hand and remember anything other than my father. It wasn’t -” 

Alex lets go of Michael’s hand like he’s been burned, shifting suddenly in his seat like he’s trying to dislodge something. Michael backs off, leans back onto his heals as Alex leans forward to rest his head in his hands. His palms pressing against his eyelids.

When Alex doesn’t move or say anything else, Michael hesitantly reaches out with his right hand and covers Alex’s left knee. They mirror each other, he thinks absently. In what the world has taken from them. The touch seems to prod Alex into speaking again.

“I have so many more memories of my father beating me than anything else. For you it’s the isolated incident in happiness? But all it is for me is the culmination of what I’d always known could happen if he caught me with a guy. Of what could happen again if I’m not careful.” 

“You’re not seventeen anymore,” Michael reminds him, but apparently it’s the wrong thing to say.

“No, I’m not.” Alex sits up, laughing bitterly. “I’m not a seventeen year old with an abusive, homophobic dad anymore. Instead I’m a twenty-seven year old with an abusive, homophobic dad who apparently has access to a top secret alien coverup and whose life’s work includes finding and - what? - dissecting? Torturing? Killing? The person I-” 

He stops, and Michael thinks it’s a little bit funny that in all of that, the word ‘love’ is the one Alex still can’t say. 

“I'm afraid I'll become him.”

It's so quiet Michael barely hears it. Maybe he isn't supposed to. 

But this is it - the reason Alex has kept his distance, the reason he hasn't allowed himself to feel love. Why he thinks he isn't worth it, or is afraid to let himself have it. The fear of becoming like his father is so powerful he's cut out parts of himself to avoid it.

When he speaks Michael tries to keep his tone gentle but he mentally adds another kick to the balls for Jesse Manes if Michael ever gets the chance. 

“You won’t.”

“How can you be sure? How is it so easy for you to-”

“Because I know you.” Alex gives him a look that expresses his doubt. “No. I _know you,_ Alex _._ Your father is a power mad asshole who gets off on torturing innocent people for some xenophobic fantasy of heroism. You aren't that guy.”

“But I could be.” Alex doesn't sound convinced of his own argument, which Michael supposes is a good thing. He sounds more just ... sad and resigned. Michael adds another two kicks to the balls. “I can feel him, Guerin. His hate. His anger. It's in my blood - it's our family history.”

“You've been railing against that for as long as I've known you, Alex. It’s not all you are.”

“Yeah, maybe. I still went to war. Killed people for no fucking reason other than that I was told to.”

“No. Listen.” He waits for Alex to look up and meet his eyes before he continues. “You are one of the kindest people I've ever met. You were literally the first person to ever show me kindness without needing a reason. I fell in love with you because of that. You believe that people are inherently good - it's fucking obnoxious sometimes.” 

“I had a little bit of a reason,” Alex argues, but he’s smiling, which Michael counts as a win. It's the soft one that means he is actually listening - Michael’s favorite. The kind that always draws an answering one from Michael.

“But it's _you,_ ” he continues. “The person you had to be to escape your father isn’t. It sucks and yeah, you did some bad things. And you lost a part of yourself that isn’t ever coming back.” 

He doesn’t really mean Alex’s leg, but they both glance at it anyway. 

“And this?” He holds up his hand, watching Alex’s face as his eyes lock onto the knuckle that healed split in two at the joint. “This is me. I’m not just the injury but just because I have it, it doesn’t make me bad. And the bad parts don’t mean there isn’t good. You showed me that, and I don’t want to forget it.”

Alex is silent, his eyes fixed on the knuckles of the hand Michael still holds up. It’s not invasive like he sometimes feels when people look at the mangled joints. It’s more like Alex is trying to reconcile what Michael has told him with what the sight has always held for him. Like he’s finally listening to what Michael hasn’t ever been able to really vocalize until now. Finally, he leans back heavily in the lawn chair, sighing and rubbing his palms over his thighs before he speaks.

“We’re pretty fucked up aren’t we.” It’s quiet, and not really a question.

“Yeah.” Michael admits. They are. Two genuine fuck-ups. “But just because we’re fuck-ups doesn’t mean we don’t have ... something that could be good between us.” 

And that’s really it, the cusp of why Michael has held onto this stupid thing between them, and why he’s never let heal-it-all Max within three feet of his hand. Why they’ve both orbited the other no matter what bullshit they’ve put each other through for the past decade. 

And yeah - it fucking sucks that Jesse Manes exists, that he fucked up something that could have been so fucking good and easy between them. That Rosa’s death deepened the hurt until it overshadowed the happiness, then. But-

“Things don’t have to be perfect to be loved, do they?”

He says it quietly, because despite everything they just talked about, there is a genuine part of him that fears that Alex _can’t_ love him as he is, now. That there really is too much hurt and too many bad memories between them to ever fix the fractured, broken memory of the thing that got Michael through the worst summer of his life. 

“I fucking hope not.”

Alex leans over to take two more beers out of the six pack beside them and offers one to Michael. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” 

Michael lets the laugh bubble out of him at the almost shy way that Alex calls back to their previous conversation. He can feel his eyes stinging. He isn’t gonna cry but he almost wants to. 

“You deserve to be. You are.” He clears his throat. He clarifies. “Loved.” 

Alex stares at him, face lit up golden by the fire, intense and for a moment completely still. And then the dam breaks, and he’s all smile and bright eyes. Something is eased in the way Alex sits, a release of tension that Michael hopes means they’re closer to fixing this thing. His eyes drop to Michael’s hand and Michael watches as a complicated series of emotions flit across his face before he lifts his eyes again. Alex nods.

“You are, too.”


End file.
